


Storyteller

by becausemagnets



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-05
Updated: 2012-10-05
Packaged: 2017-11-15 16:40:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becausemagnets/pseuds/becausemagnets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But it's not Watson's story to tell anymore, is it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Storyteller

So this is a thing, a new thing. Watson doesn't tell _his_ story, she tells hers. In the same way that Holmes has never told any stories about the murders without telling bits of himself. It happens that their lives intersect, but it never happens that Watson tries to say anything about him that he hasn't said himself and that's new. Everyone always tries to tell stories about the great Sherlock Holmes, to fill in apparent gaps and expound upon his faults as well as his triumphs, and Watson doesn't do this, not once. She has a job to do, with him, and that's it. There are no stories to be told. And that's new. 

 

So this is another thing, another new thing. She isn't afraid of him, not at all. It's not that Holmes has tried to make people afraid of him, but he hasn't discouraged it when it has been useful for him in the past either. When he's wanted things done a certain way without many questions being asked of him. But Watson doesn't blink when he tells her things, not anymore. The only time she ever seemed afraid around him was the first time he saw her, his pantomime show, and probably, really, she hadn't been afraid of him so much as she, like he, was afraid of genuine emotion. She'd thought that's what that was, only for a second, and she'd been scared, only for a second. But not of him. 

People are afraid of the intellect more than anything and she's not afraid of that, either. She's not his intellectual equal, but he's stopped supposing that anyone on this earth will be ever be able to offer him that before he was done with primary school. She's patient. If she doesn't understand, she is willing to wait until he pulls her back in. She doesn't have faith in him, which is probably fair, but she's patient. 

And she's sharp with him, parries him, doesn't let it bother her that he's a couple steps ahead of her, because in many ways, he never is. Watson sees things he misses because Watson sees things for what they are, not what they have been, not what they could be. 

 

He likes to think she sees him that way, and that's another thing, a new thing. He's never bothered much with what anyone thought of him, hadn't the time. But he's got the time to consider what Watson thinks and he'd like her to think of him as he is now, to stop asking him questions about what he's told Gregson or about his relationship with his father or the kinds of things they talk about at Narcotics Anonymous meetings. He'd like Watson not to think of the man that used to play the violin or the man that used to consult at Scotland Yard or the man who sat down in tattoo parlors and marked his skin, but of the man who keeps bees on the roof and the man that falls asleep a wall away from her and doesn't scream in his sleep anymore. But he doesn't think of himself that way, so probably she never can either. 

And there is the final new thing. He is telling a story about Joan Watson, lots of stories about Joan Watson. And he has never told a story about anyone but himself.


End file.
